Bending and Flanging

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Description:

Bending of sheet metal is a common and vital process in manufacturing industry. Sheet metal bending is the plastic deformation of the workpiece over an axis, creating a change in the part's geometry. Similar to other metal forming processes, bending changes the shape of the workpiece, while the volume of material will remain the same. In some cases bending may produce a small change in sheet thickness. For most operations, however, bending will produce essentially no change in the thickness of the sheet metal. In addition to creating a desired geometric form, bending is also used to impart strength and stiffness to sheet metal, to change a part's moment of inertia, for cosmetic appearance and to eliminate sharp edges.

Flanging is a forming operation that bends the edge of a part to permit welding, bolting, or other connections to another part formed to accommodate the formed flange. The challenge of flanging is to maintain the strength of the material at the flange break (bend). Uniformity of material thickness is highly scrutinized during forming evaluations.

What You Will Learn:

You will learn about punch/die setups for bending, the stresses and strains applied to the material during the bending process, springback issues associated with bending processes and the considerations for bending different classes of material.